So the Fearow family is the first of only a small handful of Generation 1 Pokémon that doesn’t have any sorts of added bells and whistles from more recent generations, which will leave this as a shorter review than the past few. Spearow is another simple early game bird, cast as a more aggressive foil to Pidgey in Kanto’s first few routes. While it’s more stylised and less generic than Pidgey, I don’t think it’s a particularly significant improvement and certainly not sufficiently so that it feels worth having both it and Pidgey. Pidgey may seem like the weaker link of the two to give up in a vacuum, but unfortunately Spearow’s nicer qualities such as more distinct colouration and more expressive features don’t really hold up when it evolves.

Now Fearow, at the very least, is visually distinct from other Pokemon around it at this stage in the game. Honestly though, I just find it quite ugly. It’s a gangly, vulture-like bird with dirty brown fluffy down on its back and a very rigid, uncanny red crest. It seems like it’s supposed to look sleek, aerodynamic, and threatening but it really doesn’t achieve this at all. To make matters worse, it’s aged horrendously into the era of 3D. The Fearow of X & Y and onwards looks like a horrible dirty lump rambling around in the sky pathetically. This can’t always be held against the Pokemon itself, but Fearow was already ugly and an added dimension just shows how poorly conceived it is. As if there wasn’t enough going against Fearow, there’s the fact that its niche as the more menacing Normal/Flying option is outclassed directly and entirely by the far superior Dodrio in its own generation, to say nothing of better designs in the years since. Sadly, Fearow really has nothing going for it at all.

Final verdict: 2/10 – Spearow could have gone somewhere, but Fearow is just ugly and doesn’t work properly as a design or its own Pokemon amidst far better options.